PARIS�Among the must-dos for visitors to the French capital: ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower, pay homage at the Louvre and seal your love with a Master Lock.
Paris's picturesque bridges over the Seine are heaving with padlocks, bike locks, handcuffs and other talismans of amour. Enamored visitors write their names on a lock, attach it to a bridge and throw the key into the river. Last fall, reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian, her boyfriend and their toddler son�followed by their camera crew�affixed "lovelocks" to the Pont des Arts, a pedestrian bridge with a wooden walkway that spills out of the Louvre.
Christina Passariello/The Wall Street JournalLovelocks on the Pont de l'Archev�ch�, near Notre Dame in Paris.
But, many Parisians are asking: What's love got to do with it?
The public displays of affection have unchained loathing among coldhearted locals. Some gripe that the locks are no better than graffiti, defacing the city's landmarks. Rust and pollution are concerns, too. Think of the keys littered on the bottom of the Seine "with cars and cadavers," says Sylvain Louradour, a baby sitter who lives near the Pont des Arts.
Others argue that the symbolism is all wrong. "The lock is a negative symbol of enclosure and imprisonment, the exact opposite of what love should be," says Esther Pawloff, a 48-year-old executive assistant here in Paris.
The locks have been turned into expensive contemporary art and melted down for the value of their brass. When thousands of locks were mysteriously removed one night in 2010, cynics suspected a spurned lover�or a padlock manufacturer looking for new business.
No comments:
Post a Comment